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Highway 401 Widening - Highway 8 to Townline Road
#61
Not sure if anyone will know/remember this context, but there was always a similar issue in the DC cafeteria at UW. There was one teller with one line on each side, and the teller would take turns serving from each line.

It worked fine with very little traffic (people just lined up one side) and it worked fine with lots of traffic (people lined up on both sides and just picked the shorter line - keeping them roughly the same length). But there was always an awkward moment when there were 3-8 people (depending on your personal beliefs) in a single line and you had to decide if you were going to join that line and be fair to the people ahead of you but probably let a bunch of people behind you start the new line and get served ahead of you, or if you were going to start the new line and be served before a bunch of people that arrived before you.

I guess the solution there was to just start the new line and refuse to be served until you would have been served otherwise.
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#62
A single line servicing multiple tellers is the fairest, and results in an equal wait time for all involved. Multiple, single lines for each teller result in a wait time dependant on the speed of the teller.

Years ago, before Cedar Fair took over, Canada's Wonderland used to build maaaaaasive stations for their coasters with long, individual corrals for each seat on a train. This meant that each cycle, you would only advance two people. So you'd physically move about two people every minute or so, which is agonizing. A "platform wait" at any other park might be 10 minutes, but at Wonderland, you might have spent an hour waiting in a horribly crowded situation like that.

Now, the standard is to build platforms with only one-train's worth of corrals per loading slot on the train, and typically they'll even have an attendant at the top of the stairs to the station that only allows a full shot worth of people into the platform. The queue line moves 30-40 people every minute. It's strictly a mental thing, but it makes the wait far, far more bearable.
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#63
I always like the Canada's Wonderland approach because I felt like you got to choose if you wanted to wait longer for an awesome spot or shorter for a middle spot.

But, I totally agree. One line serviced by many tellers is clearly >>>>> than the one line per teller approach, which is still >>>>> than multiple lines per teller.
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#64
I agree, seat selection is nice - I'm just pointing out the difference between most parks, which have at most 2-4 trains wait worth of people in each station corral, vs. Wonderland's older rides, which sometimes have 10+ trains wait worth of people in each row. Smile

(I am loving this thread BTW. In another life I would have loved to write papers on human behaviour and engineering in situations like the ones we've been discussing.)
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#65
There is one other big factor I haven't seen brought up with all of these different concepts, and that is that people will generally follow at a time-based headway, not a distance-based one. In other words, at 100 km/h, people are supposed to leave a ~2 second headway, but realistically that is probably closer to 1 second in heavy traffic. If more cars come onto the highway, people cannot maintain a 1 second headway... Without slowing down. Slowing down permits the headway to remain constant: essentially this is the lane capacity (how many cars per hour per lane). If there are twice as many cars on the road, but the lane capacity is constant, speed must halve.

So, that's why I'm getting at the zipper-vs-queue thing not being as big a factor as all these articles and video clips make out. It doesn't matter, because at the end of the day, if you do the zipper and make full use of the right lane, all you've done is added a storage area for a few dozen extra cars, that's it.
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#66
That's why it's better to focus on the other benefits, imo. Fairness is the big one to me. I hate having to choose between screwing over other people or getting screwed over in turn. I much prefer systems where its impossible (or very hard) to get screwed over.

It's also why I sometimes find a slower 1-lane route (like Highway 7 between KW/Guelph) less stressful than a faster 2-lane route. There's no decision making, you're stuck in the situation and you have no choice but to accept it. No need to worry about if you should try to pass someone or get annoyed at a slow car driving in the 'wrong' lane.
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#67
Absolutely 100% agreed on all counts! :thumbs: I love back roads for all the reasons you cite.
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#68
One factor that isn't an issue on Highway 8, but can be elsewhere, is that the queue can back up far enough to cause an obstruction of traffic at other interchanges or intersections. The zipper merge minimizes that issue. The safety factor is also a big one in my book; I always get nervous when one lane moves significantly faster than an adjacent one.
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#69
Driving over the Speedsville bridge today, noticed the Eastbound lanes from Speedsville to Hespeler were all paved today! Wow, that went by fairly quick! Might have been paved West of Speedsville as well, but wasn't looking over that side of the bridge.

What's the process for this type of work like? Will the new lanes be opened (or at least partially utilized) on that side, or will everything remain as-is until construction is ~90% complete?
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#70
Eventually, they will move all existing traffic to the new section, and that will free up the existing road for them to tear up and rebuild from scratch.
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#71
Yeah, I noticed them doing the paving when I drove home on Thursday evening. It didn't look like they were doing any work west of Speedsville from what I could tell, but I was driving west, so my view was limited.
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#72
Yeah, all the new paving is between Speedsville and 24. Long way to go still.
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#73
Lane markings have been painted on the new east-bound speed river bridge. I wonder when the diversion will shift to the new span to re-work the old?
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#74
I've been taking backroads this week (hypermiler diet) but noticed today when gliding over the Speedsville overpass, traffic has shifted over to the new pavement!

Maybe I'll wait another week or two before returning to the "fun" of 401 until patterns settle back down again. Smile
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#75
Does anyone know where to find drawings for the work between 8 and Hespeler? There is an EA website for the section east of Hespeler Rd, but I can't find any info on the current project.
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